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of a Car Conductor 

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Step lively please, and joia 1i\e lucky Cojv s 
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BookJilfLi. 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



THE LOVE SONNETS OF A 

CAR CONDUCTOR 




By 

Wallace Irwin 

Author of 

The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum 

The RubXiyXt of Omar KhayyXm, Junior. 

Etc. 

With a harmless 
and instructive Introduction 
by < 

Wolfgang Copernicus Addlerurger 

Professor of Literary Bi-Produfts 

University of Monte Carlo 


< 


Muse of my native land^ 
am I inspired ? 

; ; — Keats. 


PAUL ELDER &> COMPANY 
SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK 



j MAR 26 

1 g OHY e/_ j 






M# r£ W/W / j^y / Attend 
me where I wheel! 

— Troilus and Cressida. 



Copyright, 1908 
by Paul Elder and Company 



INTRODUCTION 

SCIENCE may conquer the stars, but it does nothing 
by jumps. As a Scientist , as well as a philosopher, 
i I am accustomed to reaching the transcendental 
' by winding paths. It is char acl eristic of me that I 
should have consented to preface this remarkable 
Sonnet CycCe only after supreme deliberation, and that I 
should at last have determined to speak in behalf of the Car 
Conduclor for the following reasons: 

i. As a Botanist I am fascinated by the phenomenon of 
Genius flourishing from bud to flower, from flower to seed. 

2. As a Psychologist I am anxious to establish once and 
for all, both by plano-induclive and pre-coordinate systems of 
logic, the Status of Slang. 

What position does Slang occupy in the thought of the 
world? Let us turn to Zoology for an answer. 

No traces of Slang may be found among mollusks, crusta- 
ceans or the lower invertebrates. Slang is not common to 
vertebrate fishes or to whales, seals, reptiles or anthropoid 
apes — in a word, slang-speaking is nowhere prevalent among 
lower animals. It may, then, be definitely and clearly asserted 
that Slang is the natural, logical expression of the Human 
Race. If Man, then, is the highest of created mammals, is 
not his natural speech (Slang) the highest of created lan- 
guages ? It is generally conceded that Literature is the most 
exalted expression of Language. Would not the Literature, 
then, which employs the highest of created languages (Slang) 
be the supreme Literature of the world? 

By such logical, irrefutable, induclive steps have I proven 
not only the Status of Slang, but the literary importance of 
these Sonnets which it is at once my scientific duty and my 
esthetic pleasure to introduce. 



The twenty-six exquisite Sonnets which form this Cycle 
were written, probably, during the years 7po6 and 1907. 
Their author was William Henry Smith, a car conduclor, 
who penned his passion, from time to time, on the back of 
transfer-slips which he treasured carefully in his hat* We 
have it from no less an authority than Professor Sznuysko 
that the Car Conduclor usually performed these literary feats 
in public, writing between fares on the rear platform of a 
Sixth Avenue car. Smith's devotion to his Musa Sanctissima 
was often so hypnotic, I am told, that he negletled to let 
passengers on and off — nay, it is even held by some critics 
that he occasionally forgot to collet! a fare. But be it said to 
his undying honor that his Employers never suffered from 
such carelessness, for it was the custom of our Poet to demand 
double fares from the old, the feeble and the mentally deficient. 

Even as the illimitable ichor of star-dust, the mysterious 
Demiurge of the Universe, keeps the suns and planets to 
their orbit ary revolutions, so must environment mark the 
Fas and Nefas of Genius. Plato s Idea of the Archetypal 
Man was due, perhaps, as much to the serene weather con- 
ditions of Academe as to the marvelous mentality of Plato. 
What had Job eaten for breakfast that he should have 
given utterance to his magnificent Lamentation? Was he 
the discoverer of Human Sorrow or the pioneer of Human 
Dyspepsia ? 

It is not altogether radical on my part, then, for me to 
assert that many of the stylistic peculiarities found in these 
Sonnets are attributable to the locale of their inspiration — 
the rear platform of a Sixth Avenue car. One can plainly 
hear the jar and jounce of the elliptical wheels, the cry, 

*Since the salary-books of the Metropolitan Street Railways show, during the year 
1906, 182 conductors named Smith in their employ, jS of -whom were named William 
Smith and 12 William Henry Smith, it is easy for the reader to conceive my task in estab- 
lishing the identity of our Poet. W. C. A. 



"Step lively I" the six o'clock stampede, the lament of the 
strap-hanging multitude in such lines as these: 

" Three days with sad skidoo have came arid went, 
Yet Pansy cometh nix to ride with me. 
I rubber vainly at the throng to see 
Her golden locks — gee! such a discontent! 
Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent — " 

Where are lines like these to be found in the Italian of 
Petrarch? Where has T'asso uttered an impassioned con- 
fession to resemble this: 

*' But when I ogle Pansy in the throng 

My heart turns over twice and rings a gong ' ' f 

Of the human or personal record of William Henry Smith 
very little has been discovered. Looking over the books of 
the Metropolitan Street Railway I unearthed the following 
entry : 

"Nov. i, 1907: 

" W. H. Smith, conductor, discharged. 

" Remarks: — Car No. 21144, William Smith, conduclor, ran into large 
brewery truck at So. E. cor. Sixth Ave. It is reported that Smith, to the 
neglecl of his duty, was reading poetry from a book called * Sonnets of de 
Heredia ' at the time of the accident. Three Italians were slightly in- 
jured by the accident, and Ethelbert Pangwyn, an aclor starring in * The 
Girl and the Idiot,* a musical comedy, was killed. 

" Smith was held for manslaughter, but Judge O* Rafferty, who had 
seen * The Girl and the Idiot,' discharged the defendant, averring that 
the killing of Pangwyn did not constitute a crime. ' ' 

What, then, has become of this minstrel who sang the 
Minnelieder of the Car-barns ? Like Homer, like Omar, 
like Sappho, like Shakespeare, he is a Voice singing out of the 
mists. He was but a Name to his employers ; and his friends, 
if he has friends, remember him not. 'these Sonnets, written 
neatly on twenty-six violet transfer-slips, were discovered, 
together with a rejeclion blank from a leading magazine, in 



the Dead Letter office. According to the current folk-lore in 
Harlem and the Bronx, Smith is now living in California 
employed as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific Railroad.. 
Some aver that Pansy fell heiress to a sausage establishment 
and moved to Italy with her Poet. Still others maintain 
that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug never ex- 
isted in real life — were merely the mind-children of a Sym- 
bolist and a dreamer of dreams. 

'To the latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This 
Cycle may be taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record 
of human experience as a lofty parable sounding the key-note 
of all human life. Gill the Grip is the Iago, the Mefistofele, 
the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy the Firebug 
may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of 
Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too 
far, then, to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of 
Pan-girlism — as an almost Anacreontic yearning for the 
type? Or may not these Sonnets be taken, in a way, as a 
modern Vita Nuova wherein a Sixth Avenue Alighieri calls 
to his Beatrice and mourns within when, 
" Pansy-girl refuses to occur ? yy 

So much for the Poet and his Purpose. Should any one of 
the readers of this Cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the 
lines, let him consider that I, Wolfgang Copernicus Addlebur- 
ger, have seen fit to introduce them to immortality. 








THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 




PROLOGUE 

DID some one ask if I am on the job? 
I sure am to the pay-roll with my lay, 
A hot tabasco-poultice which will stay 
Close to the ribs and answer throb-to- 
throb. 
Here have I chewed my Music from the cob 
And followed Passion from the get-away 
Past the big Grand Stand where the Pousse-Cafe 
Christens my Muse as Jennie-on-the r Daub. 

Hark ye, all marks who break the Pure Fool Law, 
How I, the Windy Wonder of the Age, 

Have fought the Tender Passion to a draw 
And got my mug upon the Sporting Page, 

Since Love and I collided at the curve 

And left me with a Dislocated Nerve. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



AM 

A 



I 

M I in bad? upon the tick of nine 

Today the Pansy got aboard my ship 
And sprung the Trans-Suburban for a 
trip. 

Say, she's the shapely ticket pretty fine ! 
Next to her pattern Anna Held looks shine 
And Lilly Russell doesn't know the grip. 
But oh ! she's got a deep ingrowing tip 
That she must shy at honks like yours and mine. 

I says to her, "Fare, please!" out loud like that, 
But she pipes, " Fade, Bill, fade ! you pinched 
my fare." 
That get-back tripped your Oswald to the mat, 
And yet I yelled, " Cough up here, Golden 
Hair!" 
Eh, what ? I got the zing from Pansy's orb 
Which says, "Dry out now, Shorty, — please 
absorb!" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 




II 

A TRUE McGlook once handed this to me : 
/% " When little Bright Eyes cuts the 
/ % cake for you 

"^* ^^ Count twenty ere you eat the honey- 
goo 
Which leads to love and matrimony — see? 
A small-change bunk what 's bats on spending 
free 
Can't four-flush when he's paying rent for 

two. 
The pin to flash on Cupid is ' Skidoo ! ' 
The call for Sweet Sixteen is 23." 

But say ! Life looks goshawful on the stretch 

Without a Ray of Sunshine in my flat, 
With no one there to call me " Handsome 
wretch/' 
And dust the fuzz and mildew off my hat. 
If she was waiting at the church tonight 
You'd find me there with wedding-bells all 
right ! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



III 

PANSY got on at Sixteenth Street last 
night, 
And some one flipped a handspring in 
my heart. 
She snickered once, " Oh look, here's Mr. 
Smart!" 
Was I there Henry Miller? guess you're right! 
I did the homerun monologue as bright 
As any scrub that ever learned the art. 
I plum forgot the signals, "Stop" and "Start I " 
And almost wrecked the car once — guess I 
might ! 

I took one Mike six blocks beyond the place 
He flagged for his. He got as red as ham 

And yodelled through his apopleptic face, 
"I think you're dips!" I says, "I know I 
am—" 

When Pansy starts to send a wireless wave 

She simply just can't make her eyes behave! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



IV 

ON EVERY car there's always one fat 
coot 
What goes to sleep and dreams he 's 
paid his fare. 
And when you squeak he gets the Roosevelt 
glare, 
And hoots, "I won't be dickied. with — I'll 

shoot!" 
Then all the passengers get in and root. 

Loud cheers of, "Put him off!" and "Make 

him square!" 
Till Mr. Holdfast with an injured air 
Pungles his nick and ends the bum dispute. 

It's ever thus on this here rolling ball — 
You've got to pop your coin to ride so far. 

The yap that kicks and rings a deadhead call 
Must either spend or else get off the car. 

On Life's Street Railway wealth may cut the 
cheese, 

But Death rings up and says, "Step lively, please!" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



~i 



T 



V 

HERE'LL be some fancy steps at Car- 
Barn Hall," 
Gilly the Gripman pipes me off to- 
day, 

"This won't be any gabberfest — for say! 
Nix but the candy goes to this here ball. 
You've got to flash your union card, that's all, 
To circulate the maze with Tessie May, 
And all the Newport push out Harlem way 
Will slip on wax till sunrise, — do you call?" 

I told him that I pulled the gong for that! 

If Pansy would be there 'twas Me for It. 
I 'd burnish up my buttons, mop my hat, 

Polish my pumps and blow in for a hit. 
"All to the Fritz," says Gill, "if you get jolly 
Around the curves — you're apt to slip your 

trolley!" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



VI 

THE lemon- wagon rumbled by today 
And dropped me off a sour one — are 
you on? 
I went and gave the boss a cooney con 
About the Car-Barn Kick — what did he say? 
" Back to your platform, Clarence light and gay, 
Jingle the jocund fares, nor think upon 
The larks of Harry Lehr or Bath House John, 
For they are It and you are still on pay." 

So I have been sky-prancing all night long 
A-dragging car-condu&ors and their queens 

Clad in their laughing-robes to join the throng 
That makes the Car-Barn function all the 
beans. 

And say ! I had a brainstorm just last trip 

When I took Pansy's fare from Gill the Grip. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



VII 

AT MIDNIGHT when I got a gasp for 
/\l lunch 

/ ^ I mushed it for the Car-Barns just to 
■^ -^- lamp 

And see the Creamy Charlies do the vamp 
And swing their Fancy Floras in the crunch. 
I piped my Pansy in among the bunch 
And asked her would she mix it with the 

Champ, 
Wouldn't she like to join me in a stamp? 
She saw me first and stopped me with a punch. 

I saw her hook a loop with Gill the Grip, 
With Pinky Smith and Handsome Hank she 
heeled ; 

With all the dossy bunks she took a skip 

Each time the German tune-professor spieled. 

But nix with me the lightsome toe she sprung — - 

As Caesar said to Cassius, "Ouch! I'm stung !" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



-i 



VIII 

FORSOOTH that was a passing lusty clout 
That chopped me off with Pansy — 
don't you fret! 
There's quite a blaze inside my gar- 
ret yet, 
And all the Dipper Corps can't put it out. 
Gilly the Grip's a pretty ricky tout — 
Under the old rag-rug for him, you bet, 
When I put on my Navajo and get 
One license to unloose my soul and shout. 

Perhaps he thinks I 'm old Molasses Freight 
Sidetracked at Pokey Pond and filled with 
prunes 

Waiting for Congress to appropriate 

The nuggets draped around me in festoons. 

Wait till I ticket Pansy, then I guess 

Slow Freight will switch to Honeymoon Express ! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



tl 



IX 

TODAY I gave a serenade to Gill; 
I says, "To put it pleasant you're a 
screech, 
Your smile would shoo the seagulls off 
the beach, 
Your face would give Vesuvius a chill. 
You're just what Mr. Shakespeare calls *a pill 
Trying to keep company with a peach.' 
Now, if you want to answer with a speech, 
Open your trap at once, or else lie still." 

But when I handed Gill the Grip this cluster 
He simply clamped his language-mill down 
tight, 

Strangled his guff and a&ed rather fluster — 
Although I 'm sure I spoke to him polite. 

I guess that Mr. Gilly ain't the kind 

That understands when people talk refined. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



X 

THREE days with sad skidoo have came 
and went, 
Yet Pansy cometh nix to ride with me. 
I rubber vainly at the throng to see 
Her golden locks — gee! such a discontent! 
Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent — 
Perhaps she's promised Gill the Grip to be 
His No. i till Death tolls "23!" 
While I am Outsky in the supplement. 

Now and anon some Lizzie flags the train 
And I, poor dots, cry, " Rapture, it is her ! " 

Yet guess again — my hope is all in vain — 
And Pansy girl refuses to occur. 

If this keeps up I think I'll finish swell 

Among the jabbers in a padded cell. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



3 



XI 

MY TROLLEY hikes to Harlem 
p.d.q., 
And picks up pikers all along the 
beat. 
At six o'clock the aisles are full of feet, 
The straps with fingers, and the entire zoo 
Boils on the platform with a mad huroo 
Reckless as Bronx mosquitoes after meat. 
The widow stands, the fat man gets the seat 
And Satan smiles like Foxy M. Depew. 

And as we hikes along I thinks, thinks I, 
"The human race is like the ocean foam, 

Roaring and discontented, peevish, fly — " 
Say, why in blazes don't they stay to home? 

This travel-sickness is a danger which 

Keeps hoboes poor and corporations rich. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



F¥l 



XII 

TODAY I piped my future Ma-in-law. 
She got aboard my Pullman and she 
scared 
Three babies into fits the way she 
glared. 
Rattle my baggage if I ever saw 
A cracker-box to equal Mother's jaw, 

A hardwood-finish face all nailed and squared. 
She ossified the gripman when she stared — 
And me? Well, I was overcame with awe. 

But, being Pansy's Ma, 't was up to me 

To hand her something pit-a-pat and swell, 

And so I says, " Hello, Queen Cherokee ! 

What ho ! for Pansy ? hope she's feeling well." 

And Ma responds, a trifle tart but game, 

"She minds her bizness — hope you feel the 



same." 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XIII 

I DO N'T think Mother chalked me out to 
win, 
To be the steady of her darling child. 
She thinks I am a kick-up, something 
wild, 
And no sweet girl should wear my college pin, 
She thinks I'm some too piffly with my chin 
And my soft prattle simply gets her riled. 
I've lost my keys with her, to put it mild, 
I don't belong, because I am not In. 

Say how, with such an iceberg on the track, 
Can I condud: my car to married bliss? 

I hoped that I could whistle Pansy back, 
And lo ! I got a frostbite off of this ! 

I'd wrastle Death for Her, I'd fight her Pa, — 

But stab me if I '11 syrup to her Ma ! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XIV 

E'EN as I stood with cobwebs in my tower 
A candy vision came and flagged the 
I boat — 
' Give forty rah-rah-rahs ! O joy, O 
gloat ! 
'Twas Pansy like a fairy in a bower 
Warbling, "Hi, stop the car!" With all my 
power 
I yanked the bell. My brain was all afloat, 
My heart cut pin-wheels, stole a base at throat, 
Sang "Tammany" — and knighthood was in 
flower. 

I helped her on. My shoes were full of feet. 

I says, "How's Ma?" She answers, "Going 
some." 
I doffed my lid and ventured to repeat 

The breeze had put the weather on the bum. 
Then she replied, not seeming sore or vexed, 
"It may not be so punk on Sunday next." 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 




XV 

THE Sinful Rich go whizzing by all day 
In wealthy wagons, looking pert and 
swell ; 
They get the ride, the Commons get 
the smell 
And full of thought and microbes wend their 

way. 
Maxy the Firebug says that Mammon's sway 
Is stringing Virtue to a fare-ye-well, 
But wait, he says, till Labor with a yell 
Soaks Mam a crack forninst the vertebray. 

The Rich, says Max, are simply dips and yeggs 
That lift the headlight beads from yaps like 
us; 

They pinch your pie, sew up our ham and eggs 
And leave us minus all that they are plus. 

The world, says Max, belongs to me and Bill 

And Mrs. Casey — whoa! let's roll a pill! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XVI 

AT MRS. CASEY'S hunger-killing shop 
/% Whither I hie thrice daily for my 
/ ^ stew, 

-*■ -^ I dream I'm Mr. Waldorf as I chew 

My prunes or lay my Boston-baked on top. 

Growley and sinkers, slum and mutton sop, 
India-rubber jelly known as "glue," 
A soup-bone goulash with a spud or two, 

Clatter below until I signal "Stop!" 

There may be chefs in France or Albany 
Can knock a poem from a wedge of pie ; 

But just give me a check on Mrs. C, 
For rapid-filling ballast, murmurs I. 

Kings may prefer some tasty wads of hash, 

But they don't feed at fifteen cents per crash ! 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XVII 

PANSY and me for Coney Sunday noon 
To see a perfect lady bump the bumps ; 
We rubbered at the lions with the 
chumps 
And took the Wellman special to the moon. 
She asks me, " Dance ?" I answers, "Just as 
soon," 
And so we clutched and whirled into the 

gumps, 
But every time I went to stir my stumps 
They stuck like gum-drops to a macaroon. 

"I could die dancing, Danny !" murmurs she. 
( I gambolled on her corns, she hollered, 
"Don't!") 
"I could die dancing also" (this from me), 

"But if you'll pass me up, I guess I won't." 
Just then some lemon-sport observed my glide 
And warbled, "jSlide, you frozen chicken, 
slide!" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



-i 



XVIII 

I NEXT sprung Pansy for a four-bit feed — 
It was a giddy tax, but what care I ? 
We shot the bill-of-fare from soup to pie 
And lemonade (that cost an extra seed). 
"You're the cute plunge," says Pans', and I 
agreed 
That at a spenderfest I wasn't shy,- — 
That when it came to rolling nickels by, 
Willie the Cowboy was a perfect bleed. 

She said that Thomas Lawson on a lark 
Would faint away to see the way I blew ; 
She said I'd be the whizz in Central Park, 

And Ready Cash to me seemed very few. 

I asked her, Did she need a Valentine ? 

And she responded, "You're the pink for 
mine ! " 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



a 



XIX 

WE TOOK the iron-clad wave-tub 
home at ten, 
And as we sat conversing on the 
deck 
A certain Hester-street spaghetti-neck 
Pipes through the darkness, " Who's yer lady- 

fren'?" 
There might have been a hoe-down there and 
then 
( That war-ship never came so near a wreck ) ; 
The dog-eye boy got just as pale as heck 
And made a duck behind the trenches, when — 

Pansy boiled up and clamped me by a flip. 

"Nixie the kindergarten! " murmurs she. 
" Gents," I replied out loud, " Get off the ship 

And walk, or else nail down that repartee. 
This yard of lace I'm holding, so to speak, . 
Is pinned on tight — or will be in a week." 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XX 

A -LOPPING on a car-barn bench I spied 
/% Gilly the Grip, quite recent this 

mJLm -^* Just like a lily on a broken stem 

Or like a Salt Lake buck without a bride. 

"Chirk, Gilly, chirk !" I says in tones of pride, 
"Perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tern. 
The world is full of pompadours for them 

That keep their search-lights peeled from side 
to side. ,, 

But Gill remarked, "Eh, what? Say, I'm so 
slow 
I couldn't catch the hour-hand on a clock. 
I'm simply stationary as they grow; 

A lamp-post race could beat me round the 
block. 
You needn't think you're such an Alfred G., 
To motor by a quarry-cart like me!" 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XXI 

NEXT week the wedding-bells won't do 
a thing, 
For I'll be there, I guess, to fill the 
set, 
And Pansy's Ma, she won't be late, you bet, 
To see the Reverend Mr. pull the string. 
Me for a spike-tailed scabbard and a ring, 
A shell-back shirt, forsooth a peacherette. 
I'll be the daintiest bridegroom ever yet; 
Nothing to do but take the count, then — bing! 

Love in a cottage run on union pay — 

Can Teddy Roosevelt do a sum like that? 

Two can eat cheap as one, perhaps, but say, 
You 've got to beat a quarter pretty flat 

To cork three squares, make Little Two Shoes 
snug 

And keep the Wolf from chewing up the rug. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



XXII 

METHINKS I'm tagged to join the 
Worry Club, 
To chase the fleeting rhino through 
the gloom, 
To bag the boodle, trap the wild mazume 
And scratch for corn when Pansy hollers 

"Grub!" 
They say Til turn as sickly as a chub 

When on the First, with dull and deadly 

boom, 
The Rent comes round and walks into the 
room, 
Remarking, " Peel or else file out, you scrub ! " 

But when your arms are full of girl and fluff 
You hide your nerve behind a yard of grin ; 

You'd spit into a wild cat's face or bluff 
A flock of dragons with a safety pin. 

Life's a slow skate, but Love's the dopey glim 

That puts a brewery horse in racing trim. 




THE LOVE SONNETS OF 

A CAR CONDUCTOR 



ra 



EPILOGUE 

KIND reader, when you 'phone don't ask 
for me 
Enquiring how a Flossie should be 
won — 
'There isn't any Rule Book, are you on? 
And Queenie ca n't be coaxed by recipee. 
Some girls like hard-luck music, minor key, 
Some like the Gas-car Gussie ac~l, hot ton, 
Others are simply fierce for folly fohn 
Who loves to make a noise like repartee. 

None but the Nerve, say I, deserves the Fair, 
And stony hearts ca nt stand up long to chin. 

If Willie-on-the-doormat lingers there 
The chances are he'll be Invited In, 

Up against Love the Candy Kid is nix ; 

The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks. 



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